Merry Christmas Cozy Mystery Gift Set

by Meredith Potts

  Confusion was all over Mike’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mike, we know you killed George,” I said.

  Mike continued to plead his innocence. “How can you possibly know that? Especially since I didn’t do it.”

  I pounded my fist on the desk. “Stop lying.”

  He tried arguing with me again. “I’m not—”

  I reached into my purse, pulled out a digital videotape, and threw it on the table. “This tape says otherwise.”

  Mike stared at the tape with laser-like focus. “Where did that come from?”

  I filled him in. “A security camera mounted over Amy Maloney’s front porch on Cardinal Drive. But let me be clear. Where the tape came from isn’t nearly as interesting as what is on the tape.”

  Mike got choked up and fell silent.

  “This tape shows you parking on the street in front of Bill Goldman’s house at seven fifteen on the night of the murder. From there, you cut through Bill Goldman’s yard, heading toward George’s backyard. At seven nineteen, there is video of you returning from George’s place as you went back through Bill Goldman’s yard on the way back to your car. After that, the footage recorded you starting your car and speeding away,” I said. “Now what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Words failed Mike at that moment. Actions did not. In a panic, he reached out and grabbed the tape.

  I chuckled. “Go ahead. That tape is all yours. We made copies.”

  “Many copies,” my brother added.

  I stared Mike down. “Like I said, we know you killed George. It’s time to come clean.”

  Mike shook his head in denial. “No. This can’t be happening.”

  I turned up the heat. “Oh, it’s happening, all right. It must really burn you. There you were, thinking you had gotten away with murder, but it’s over. Come clean.”

  Mike averted his eyes and lowered his head. A moment later, he took a deep breath and groaned. “George destroyed my life. It was one thing getting beat out for that promotion. That was bad enough. The pain he caused me didn’t stop there, though. I was still reeling from the news of losing that promotion to him when I caught him sleeping with my girlfriend. That was the last nail in the coffin. No way was I going to take that lying down. I was going to get my revenge at all costs. I knew the thing that gave him the most joy in life was the holiday light display he put up every year. So I figured there was no better way to get my revenge than by strangling him with his own lights.”

  I shook my head is disgust. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  There was no remorse on Mike’s face. “I don’t regret what I did. I only regret getting caught.”

  “I’m sure you will have plenty more regrets when you spend the rest of your life behind bars,” I replied.

  My brother handcuffed Mike and read him his rights before loading him into the back of his squad car. From there, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that this case was behind us.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Typically, I needed a bit of a transition period to catch my breath after solving a case. Then again, most of my sleuthing didn’t take place smack dab against a major holiday. With the killer behind bars, I found myself yearning to return to my Christmas preparations, sooner rather than later.

  I was so determined to get my holiday spirit back that I skipped my customary celebratory post-sleuthing donut with my brother. Joe didn’t understand why I was in such a rush to return home. Then again, he didn’t love Christmas nearly as much as I did. This was one of my favorite times of the year. I didn’t want to miss out on any of the festivities. In addition, after the way I had abruptly said goodbye to my boyfriend and scurried off to investigate the murder, I wanted to reconnect with Daniel.

  My plan was to freshen up then treat my boyfriend to dinner and a movie. When I returned home, it became clear that Daniel had some alternate plans of his own, not to mention a sizable surprise for me.

  When my brother dropped me off in front of my house, I was greeted with two different treats. The first was Daniel standing out front, waiting for me. The second was a visual delight that was an absolute feast for my eyes. It turned out that my boyfriend had been busy in my absence. While I was off solving the murder case, Daniel had waged war against my box of tangled Christmas lights. Even better, he had emerged victorious.

  I looked in awe at the Christmas lights that had been strung up all over the front of my house. It was nice and modest display, nothing garish like the lighting explosion over at George Dolan’s place. I loved that the lights at my house were festive but not over the top. What was even more impressive to me at that moment was the fact that lights were strung up at all.

  Daniel greeted me with a big smile as I got out of my car.

  “Wow,” I said, still fixated on the Christmas lights.

  “Welcome home,” he replied.

  My eyes were still wide looking at his handiwork. “This is amazing. Honey, did you really do all of this?”

  He nodded. “You’re not the only one who has been busy lately.”

  I let it all soak in, not just the fact that the lights were up, but that my boyfriend had gone out of his way to string them up for me. “I’ll say. What a kind gesture. I can’t believe you really did this for me.”

  “I guess that means you like it, then?”

  “Of course I do. You know how much Christmas lights frustrate me, so the fact that I don’t have to wrestle with them this year makes me incredibly happy.”

  “That’s exactly why I did this. I figured you could use a break. Besides, you’ve had your mind on more pressing matters lately. The last thing you needed was to come back and have to stare down a box of tangled lights.”

  “Still, you didn’t have to do this for me,” I said.

  “I know. I just wanted to.”

  I felt so touched by his kind gesture. A big smile came to my face as I gazed deep into his eyes. “You’re such a sweet boyfriend.”

  Daniel remained modest. “It was the least I could do. I don’t like seeing you unhappy, and untangling those lights was getting you really worked up.”

  “Yeah. Just a little,” I said, understating things. I switched my focus. “By the way, how did you manage to get the lights untangled?”

  “I didn’t.”

  I became highly confused.

  Daniel explained himself. “I bought a couple of boxes of new lights.”

  “Good call,” I replied.

  “Yeah. I have learned that sometimes it is worth it to spend a couple of extra bucks to spare yourself from aggravation.”

  “My lack of patience deeply thanks you for that sentiment.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You know, it was a little dicey back there for a while, but it looks like it’s going to be a happy holiday after all.”

  “It’s already a happy holiday because I have you in my life,” Daniel replied.

  I was so overcome with emotion that I wrapped my arms around my boyfriend. How did he always know the sweetest thing to say at any given moment? To some women, romance was flowers, diamonds, and boxes of chocolate. Call me a simple woman, but having Christmas lights strung up for me and getting a heartfelt compliment sent my way was as romantic as possible.

  I peered into his eyes, as smitten as could be. “Bring on the mistletoe.”

  “Who says we need mistletoe?” Daniel replied.

  Daniel leaned in and gave me a deep kiss that nearly took my breath away. Even after all the time we had been dating, he still had the ability to sweep me off my feet. That in and of itself was a wonderful gift.

  When he finally pulled back from the kiss, I had to catch my breath.

  “You’re right. Mistletoe is completely optional,” I said.

  The End.

  The Killer Holiday Office Party

  Chapter One

  “There’s nothing like a man who knows how to cook,” I said.

  My boyfrien
d, Daniel Jacobsen, smiled at me as he stood in front of the stove in his kitchen. He was a tall, handsome, athletic man in his early forties with short, sandy-brown hair, hazel eyes, and soft, kissable lips.

  It turned out that Daniel knew how to do more than just cook—he was so good at it that he owned a highly popular restaurant in town. People happily parted with their hard-earned money so they could get a meal from his place. I was lucky enough to eat his food for free. As an added bonus, Daniel even baked for me at home sometimes. That was one of my favorite treats about our relationship.

  “You are only buttering me up because I’m making Christmas cookies,” Daniel replied.

  There were few words in the English language sweeter than “Christmas” and “cookies.” When combined, they were a delight to my taste buds. Daniel’s frosted sugar cookies were delicious, soft-baked, and impossible to resist.

  It was hard enough to go wrong with cookies to begin with, but Daniel had a way of making his cookies taste especially sweet. Part of it was because he didn’t skimp on ingredients. It was hard to overstate what a difference using real butter made instead of using cheap substitutes. Thankfully, he never baked with margarine.

  There was also something to be said about a dessert that was cooked with love—that was homemade and not just mass-produced for the public.

  My mouth was watering just thinking about taking a bite of his cookies. “You can’t go wrong with sweets.”

  “Tell that to my diet.” Daniel looked down at his belly. “According to my calorie count—you can’t go right with sweets.”

  “It’s the holidays. If there has ever been a time to live a little, it is now.”

  “And, there went the last of my willpower,” he cracked.

  “Don’t worry. Our diets will be waiting for us in the new year.”

  “I’ll bet they will.”

  The holidays used to be a bittersweet time for me. I loved the season and all the Christmas parties that came with it but hated stressing out about eating too much or trying to restrain my appetite. Denying myself sweets just took the fun out of going to the parties in the first place, as I spent most of the time fixating on the food other people were devouring that I had to find a way to resist. In the end, I always ended up giving in to my cravings for sweets, only to feel bad about it later.

  Recently, I had come to a realization. The holidays were going to be a diet disaster. That was just a fact. It was almost impossible to survive the Christmas season without having five extra pounds to show for it. This newfound paunch was like the Christmas present I never asked for but somehow always seemed to get anyway—very much like that pack of tube socks that my aunt always sent me.

  Knowing that it was futile to try to resist temptation during the holidays, I decided to stop the constant wrestling with my willpower. I accepted that there was no way to avoid gaining those five dreaded holiday pounds. My new plan was to lose enough weight before the holidays began as a buffer to be able to properly enjoy cookies and other sweets when the season arrived.

  I had just finished a crash diet and now had five pounds to spare, just in time to go cookie wild.

  I gazed into my boyfriend’s eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll be just fine.”

  “Do you know what I love about you?” Daniel replied.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “No, but I’m curious to hear your answer.”

  “That you don’t lose hope.”

  “Except when I have to wait too long for cookies,” I teased.

  He leaned in and gave me a kiss. “They are coming right up.”

  My daydreams about cookies were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Daniel’s doorbell ringing.

  Daniel looked puzzled as his head turned toward his front door.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  I bit the corner of my lip, just as befuddled as he was. “Who could it be?”

  Daniel was dismissive. “It’s probably someone trying to sell me something. Just ignore it.”

  Whoever was at the door wasn’t about to give up. They gave up ringing the bell and began knocking.

  “Are you sure you want to ignore them?” I asked.

  Daniel sighed. “All right. I’ll tell them I’m not interested in whatever they are selling.”

  Just as Daniel began approaching the front door, I heard another set of knocks, which was followed by a deep voice.

  “Hope,” the male voice said.

  Daniel stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows. “Apparently, they want to see you.”

  The male voice called out again. “Hope, are you there?”

  My boyfriend urged me along. “You should probably get the door.”

  Even though the voice was muffled by the door, I recognized who it was. For some unknown reason, my brother, Detective Joe Hadley of the Hollywood Police Department, was at my boyfriend’s front door asking for me.

  I reached the door and opened it, sure enough revealing my brother—a clean-shaven, crew-cut, blue-eyed man in his late thirties with no neck to speak of. Joe had a grim look on his face.

  Uh-oh.

  This situation had bad news written all over it. I held out hope that I was wrong. After all, it was the holidays, a time of peace and revelry. After I had been unexpectedly called into service to investigate a murder last Christmas, I was especially hoping for a tranquil holiday season this year. All of that could have been thrown in jeopardy depending on what my brother had to tell me.

  “Joe, what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Joe replied.

  “That’s what a phone is for. Why did you come all the way over here?” I said.

  “I went to your place first. When you weren’t there, I figured I could find you here.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Why didn’t you just call me?”

  Once again, my brother didn’t answer my question. “Can I please come in?”

  I called him out. “Why are you avoiding my question?”

  “I’ll explain everything. Can I just come in first?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  I let my brother in then closed the door behind him.

  “Now, what do you have to tell me?” I asked.

  Before Joe had a chance to answer, Daniel peeked his head out from the kitchen.

  “Want some cookies, Joe?” Daniel asked.

  My brother shook his head. “Thank you, but not right now.”

  “All right. Your loss,” Daniel replied.

  Daniel then returned to his cookie preparations.

  By that point, my patience was shot. I needed an answer. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  Joe sat me down on the couch, which was the latest indication that trouble was to come.

  “Nick Newton is dead.”

  My jaw dropped. I was in complete disbelief—to the point where I convinced myself that I had heard that wrong. “What?”

  “It looks like the result of a burglary gone wrong,” Joe revealed.

  I wasn’t just imagining this. It was really happening. This was devastating news. Worse than I ever could have expected. No wonder my brother hadn’t wanted to deliver the news on the phone.

  Nick was an old friend of mine. We had known each other for years—dating all the way back to elementary school. For a brief time in high school, we were even a couple. It didn’t take us long to realize that our personalities were too different to ever make a romantic relationship work, but we had a surprisingly amicable breakup and had remained friends in the decades since then.

  Back in the present, for him to be dead, just like that, was almost impossible for me to fathom. That realization was even more difficult to come to grips with considering I was talking about Christmas cookies with Daniel just three minutes before I had heard this news.

  At the same time, there was something about my brother’s theory of Nick’s death being from a burglary
gone wrong that didn’t sit right with me.

  I addressed that with my brother. “You think a burglar killed him?”

  Joe nodded.

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  Joe tried to comfort me. “I know it’s hard to believe.”

  No amount of sympathy was going to make this sit right in my head, especially since my gut instinct was going wild on me.

  I corrected my brother. “You’re wrong. It’s impossible to believe.”

  “It’s not impossible. As horrible as it is, it happened. I saw his body with my own eyes. I just left his house, as a matter of fact.”

  Joe wasn’t following my logic.

  I clarified my point. “I think there’s some confusion. I don’t doubt what you saw. What I have a hard time believing is that a burglar killed him.”

  Instincts were an odd thing. I had nothing to back up my opinion, but my gut was telling me the burglar theory rang false deep inside me. My instincts had rarely betrayed me in the past, so I had no reason to do anything but believe them now.

  Joe came at this from a different vantage point. “Hope, I saw the scene. His place was trashed. It’s not hard for me to believe a burglar did this. The crime scene had all the markings of it.”

  Hearing my friend’s house being referred to as a crime scene sent a shiver down my spine. I still had plenty of shock that I was trying to work through. As hard as it was to do, I had to find a way to get over it. There were more pressing matters at hand.

  The problem with my instincts was that they were a little vague for their own good sometimes. They told me something was wrong in a general sense, but gave me no specifics. I had to go digging for those.

  That’s just what I did. “Joe, let me ask you this—was anything major stolen from his place?”

  “My team is still going through the place, but it doesn’t look like it.”

  “How about his Golden Ad statuette? That was his most prized possession.”

  Nick owned a local advertising agency. They produced a number of television, radio, and print ads. If it was up to Nick, his agency would be known for its public service announcements and serious ads dealing with a wide number of topics ranging from suicide prevention to combating poverty to wounded veterans services. Nick had actually won his Golden Ad statuette for producing a thirty-second television ad warning of the dangers of text messaging while driving.